Ghana signs $10b bauxite deal with China

It is true Africa may not boast the most glowing continental repute of having the best infrastructural wonders out there. Yet this doesn’t mean nations in Africa are that baldy handicapped up to using crude abacus in their central banks. Africa still boasts it fair share of indigenous industry. Those industries Africa already basks in or those it hopes to build. Among the latter is the promising Ghanaian bauxite industry the nation has signed a $10 billion memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China to massively build.

Some three years ago following a pronounced fiscal crisis and crashing commodity prices, economic growth in Ghana stalled. Earlier this year when the incumbent Ghanaian President Akufo-Addo ascended, he elucidated a relief program. This program was slated to restore the Ghanaian economy from the woods back to the path of growth. This he planned to do through giant reforms in the private sector and rural growth. Such presidential ambitions form the basis for this new investment coming from China.

Speaking on the development, Yaw Osafo-Maafo who is a Senior Minister in Ghana dragged to the ambitions of the President:

“To develop the bauxite project with its railway and converting bauxite into aluminium we will need about $10 billion … we signed an MOU,” Osafo-Maafo announced reporters at a conference in London after he touched down home from China.

“The money will come from the Chinese Development Bank, the implementation of the project will come from other agencies, infrastructure agencies in China, like China Railway,” he said.

Such money from China would be judiciously appropriated to the construction of 1,400 km of an intended 4,000 km railway network. Such project would completely link production sites to bauxite mines even up to procuring a rail link into Burkina Faso.

In course of his China visit, signatures were touched on a separate MOU between the Association of Ghana Industries and China. The aftermath of this mature into a gigantic $2 billion investment in industry as well as in agricultural projects.

Recounting the words of Osafo-Maafo “build a dam in every village and a factory in every district”, he said.

Such giant projects are what we want to be hearing about. Impressive infrastructural leaps that pulls Africa up to par with its continental contemporaries.